Three Poems by Tom Pescatore: Trinities, Fluoride for the road , End the World

Three Poems
by Tom Pescatore

Trinities

Hey, Walt I think of your voice
in that wax cylinder
long ago
what were you thinking about, well
if you ask me, I think
you were thinking--
could it work?
ah, out under your stars

the civil wars, the campfires--

And, Jack what kept you
going really, after seven years
and nothing to show?
falling apart in Mexico
and California and all that
shit and Allen losing
what was left of
his reality,

taking several phrases from you--

Fuck, Hem, when it got to
the end and it was lost--
the dream, was it black under the
Florida haze when you showed us the way
it's eventually got to be,
our hands and the rifle
and our life's work
moldy on the shelf,
dusty jackets and illustrations
we didn't okay, thrown away,
asking god because we can't
remember ourselves--

did we ever get that shark?

Fluoride for the road

I'll drink from the water
fountain fluoride dispensers
and corrode my
pineal gland because my
dreams are already dead

best not to think too much
or you'll think

of a way out
or of someplace you should be
rather be
supposed to be

I'll shower in it
so it rots everything else
preserving only itself--

I hope it kills my vision
and I have nothing but black
empty nothingness to sleep in

I can't live if there's anything left
to wish for

End the World

She's got a ringtone whistle
eating day-glo cake on the sidewalk
mistletoe street, the cats are all
backed up in the alley counting fish bone
soup tickets, skin stickin' to their little ribs,

nearby the greyhound bus is flying
pink flags for the pirates on I-95
who won't pull the colors over because
everyone on the bailout sheet is sure
they've got bigger rigs to fry,

catch that bum Bodhisattva crossin' the highway
facing oncoming traffic both ways,
with the checkered bag and picnic memories
canned beans and anachronisms,
no money and homeless outside or within
city limits peppered limits limits of the void
ball machine chaotic glitter thunderstorm swelling,

a dimensional rift has opened out
toward Pennsylvania and 17th
on a grey old day like other old gray days
before, behold the godhead apocalypse in the
guise of falling lambs delicately painted by
fluorescent crayon wax descending,
listen up it's the nothingness abyss that'll suck us all in,
not the hooded pantry snakes and dreaded jungle gyms,

these are just the signs I've imagined from
my windowed seat.

Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia dreaming of the endless road ahead, carrying the idea of the fabled West in his heart. He maintains a poetry blog:amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he'd rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. His chapbooks Trapped in the Night, Shave and A Magical Mistake are forthcoming in 2013.

Copyright 2013, © Tom Pescatore. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.